WTF (Church – wrong or right?)

This picture has been doing the rounds as a sign of a church not being aware of ‘culture’ – however, looking at their Facebook page, I think they are only too aware of what WTF means: “A Wake advertisement hangs outside the north side of the SUB on Thursday. The First Family Church sponsors Wake, which is for college-aged Christians.” An interesting take on getting publicity – not sure what I think of that – always thought FCUK was in rather poor taste…

12 thoughts on “WTF (Church – wrong or right?)”

This article reminded me of getting into trouble way-back-when for a simple rock worship event I planned in my 20s which we title ‘rocking the foundations’.

Now, whilst the team all thought that was jolly clever and droll wordplay about having our amps on eleven, some conservative-with-a-small-c church leaders had a real problem with it. They sincerely thought we aimed to ‘rock the foundations of The Church’, ie replace Christ with sheer volume. I can see why that would not have been a great advert.

It’s not what we planned at all.

I imagine that the people who showed up probably saw what we were doing correctly; we honestly thought that dull worship needed a proper shake-up to get it anywhere near worthwhile.

So the ‘slightly offensive’ title polarised the potential audience. The attendees probably saw that as indicating ‘wanting to be an alternative’ rather than ‘wanting to cause offence’.

I suppose the wtf church campaign does just that; right or wrong, probably attracts people who consider such modern-day-savvy an alternative to ‘stuffiness’?

I don’t know. But if I’m honest – I wouldn’t run a church campaign entitles ‘wtf’ these days.

I think the church always does ‘popular’ culture with a massively embarrased self-consciousness that simply jars with the ‘hip’ ‘nowness’ they’re trying to project. If they’d just “be themselves” and stop trying to be something they’re not, people might actually recognise their integrity. The “take up your cross” message might not be ‘hip’ or ‘popular’ but it shows a level of integrity that more people can respect than all the ‘popular’ messages combined.

(this comment wasn’t intended to be flippant by the way, but a longer explanation of what I mean could turn into a blog/troll post and nobody likes that)

Mmm. I think it’s a bit near the mark, yeah. But you made me think of a creative seminar thing at Spring Harvest years ago, where groups were given the task of designing a t-shirt slogan against poverty. The best one by far was “The person who made this t-shirt was only paid 10p – but who gives a FCUK?”

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